altercation

So my dad invited me to go to a traditional wrestling match [lutte traditionelle] on Valentine's Day, and since wrestling is much more representative of my love life (and also it was a great cultural opportunity, of course) than the lovey-dovey stuff, I decided to go. Reflecting on that three-hour period of my life, I really don't know what to think. It was totally nuts, and totally indescribable. So instead of trying to ramble on about what, exactly, traditional wrestling looks like, I give you a video:



I don't know about you guys, but this is what I saw: large men with large thighs in very tiny, colorful diapers, bitch-slapping each other until they find an opportunity to suddenly hurl the other man to the ground. Yeah, I thought you saw that, too. Anyway, it was a pretty amazing experience. There were about four thousand people, all packed into this tiny sand arena. The reason I had such a good view was because I was sitting in the sand about two feet away from some of the fighters. Pretty exciting.

Towards the end, about a third of the people in my section got up and stormed away. I couldn't figure out why, until I got upgraded to an actual seat by my dad, who told me that they were outraged at the arbitration-- apparently the referees weren't very good. I thought it was kind of weird that they would leave right before the semi-finals, but I guess when you're angry, you just can't sit still for one more second. And when the final bout did occur, it wasn't as intense as I thought it would be. It kind of just...
... ended.